Then he went away and left Barbison to his task. It was a particularly repulsive one, but he accomplished it, and spent most of the next few days trimming coal, waiting on the fireman, and cleaning out an empty coal-bunker on his hands and knees. It is probable that the sight of Victoria filled him with ineffable relief, and it certainly was not Fleming's fault if this were not the case. As they steamed into the harbor Jimmy sent for him.
"I think you have earned your passage, and we're straight," he said. "You can go ashore when we get in."
Barbison glanced down at his dilapidated attire. "Can I go ashore this way? I'll ask you a favor. Let me stay until it's dark."
Jimmy laughed. "Well," he said, "as I scarcely think Mr. Merril will send you back again, you may."
CHAPTER XVIII
ELEANOR SPEAKS HER MIND
The afternoon was hot and drowsily still when Merril drove his daughter down the dusty road which runs from New Westminster through the Fraser meadows. The team was a fast one, and the man, who had an appointment to keep in Vancouver, did not spare them. There were also reasons why he found rapid motion and the attention the mettlesome horses required a welcome distraction, for just then he was troubled with a certain sense of irritation which was unusual with him.
Merril was not a hot-tempered man; in fact, he owed his commercial success largely to the dispassionate coolness which rarely permitted his feelings to influence his actions, and it was characteristic of him that while he had a finger in a good many schemes the man himself never figured prominently in connection with any of them. His influence was felt, but he was in one sense rather an abstract force than a dominant personality. It was said of him that he always worked underground, and he certainly never made political speeches or favored the newspapers with his views; while, when the results of his unostentatious efforts became apparent in disaster to somebody, as they usually did, it generally happened that other men incurred the odium. There are, of course, financiers whose enterprises benefit the whole community, since they create new corn-fields and open mines and mills, but Merril's genius was rather of the destructive order, and it was not to anybody's advantage that he knew how to choose his time and instruments well. In person, he was little, somewhat portly, and very neatly dressed, a man who had never been known to lose his temper or force himself upon the citizens' attention.
Still, he was human, after all, and as he sat behind his costly team that afternoon he was thinking somewhat uneasily of the unexpected resistance certain land-jobbers in New Westminster had shown to his demands, and the attack on him which had just appeared in a popular journal. It was the second time the thing had happened, and, though he was not directly mentioned and the statements could scarcely be considered libelous, it was evident that a continuance of them would have the effect of turning the attention of those who read them upon his doings, which was just then about the last thing that he desired.
It accordingly happened that he drove a little faster than he generally did, until as the team swung out of a strip of shadowy bush he saw a jumper-sled loaded high with split-rails on the road close in front of him. He shouted to the man who walked beside the plodding oxen, never doubting that way would be made for him, especially as the teamster looked around. The oxen, however, went straight on down the middle of the road, and it was a trifle too late when Merril laid both hands upon the reins. In another moment there was a crash, and Anthea was almost shaken from her seat. When Merril swung himself down he saw that one wheel had driven hard against the jumper load. Then as he called to Anthea to move the team a pace or two, the patent bushing squeaked and groaned, and the wheel, after making part of a revolution, skidded on the road. The man who drove the oxen turned and favored him with a little sardonic grin.